American Airlines 3-Class A321 Service to Launch in January

American Airlines announced launch dates for its new 3-class A321 service between JFK and LAX beginning in January. The aircraft will be configured with 10 First Class seats (1-1); 20 Business Class seats (2-2-, also lie-flat); 36 “Main Cabin Extra” coach seats; and 36 regular coach seats. I know this sounds pretty much like what JetBlue is doing, but (I’m 99.5% sure) those announcements were unrelated to each other.

AA will begin rolling out the A321 on January 7th (AA 133 and AA 181 JFK-LAX; and AA 118 and AA 10 LAX-JFK), with 6 of their 9 daily flights switched over by the end of January. JetBlue will offer 4 daily flights on the route.

Given the upgrades on AA, Delta, and JetBlue on their transcon routes, I’m curious what UA will be doing with their Newark-LAX (and SFO) flights. They’re rolling out upgraded cabins to replace their old PS aircraft on transcons from JFK, but their Newark flights (9 daily to LAX) are served by a mix of 737s and domestic-configured 757s (with an occasional international 757 thrown in for good measure. As United Elites know, upgrades are difficult-to-impossible on those routes from Newark so the front cabin is full of paying passengers (apparently). United (Continental, really) always considered Newark to be a different market than JFK, so perhaps they don’t see much competition on the routes (Virgin America has a few nonstops, and AA offers 1 daily nonstop on a 737). It looks like they’ll be keeping EWR-LAX in the current domestic first class configuration and leaving it at that.